


Paper Moon

by used_songs



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-06
Updated: 2010-09-06
Packaged: 2017-10-11 12:47:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/112576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/used_songs/pseuds/used_songs





	Paper Moon

In those movies, as least as I remember them, space ships are shiny and they glitter. Everything is clean. There are little colored lights. Nice filters that scrub the air. Windows through which to star gaze and dream of distant, waiting fields. Silver with a dream of green. Reality, as usual, begs to differ. Can't wait to thrust the unpleasant truth beneath your nose for you to smell.

Travel doesn't broaden you. It narrows you down to focus on the here. The now. The creature discomforts. The sarcasm of banter in the onboard bar, if you're lucky. Or the lonely surreptitious swig in an isolated bunk somewhere deep in the gut of a wheezing death trap. Swallowing vacuum as your only other option.

Bitter sadness, mixed with leaves so dry and brittle that they crumble into a hundred tiny squares, brown as dust and yellow as bone. If there were leaves. The notes falling, crowding down the scale, plucked and airless. If there were music. The hot heavy glass in a viscous pool of its clear sweat, panting on the table. If they let you drink. The smoke. You know. Wave it away.

I miss you. Broken and blackened, its edge falling into the floor. I was breathing, quiet, behind the heavy curtains, eyes peeping at me through carved wood notches, outside a sky hung with a dozen moons, none of them a moon you have ever seen.

I miss you. We were drinking. We were singing sad songs. I think you might be watching me. Hasty smile to hide my true thoughts. I have time for all the vices now.

It's about time … about time I tell you how much I miss you and how much … how much it pains me to be so honest. How far away I am.

But you aren't there. I could tell the story a different way, but I'm afraid I can't change it. If I could find a way to reach back and pull you forward. I would. Being lonely is worse than death. A little bit worse.

The movement sets me to coughing. Thick, like spitting only it won't come up. Just the harshness in my chest and throat. Raw. Bloody. Veins standing out, tracing the paroxysm.

Just a little more darkness. Just let me go a little longer before you pack me away. Or you could let me fall.

And when I get up I'll be a little further on.


End file.
